Ary Scheffer

Bio

Ary Sheffer was born in Holland, of a German father and Dutch mother, but lived in France from the age of fourteen. He briefly took painting lessons with Prud’hon in 1810, and in 1811 he entered the École des Beaux-Arts as a student of Pierre-Narcisse Guérin whose other students included Géricault, Delacroix, Sigalon, Delaroche and Victor Orsel. Scheffer began painting neoclassical history subjects, and first exhibited in the Salon in 1812. Soon Scheffer’s choice of subject matter moved with the changing sentimental genre. Like Delacroix, Scheffer’s sympathy for the Greeks during their war against the Turks inspired a series of paintings (including the Souliot Women, Louvre) which attracted him great notice as a young Romantic. Active in intellectual and political circles during the Restoration and the July Monarchy, Scheffer painted the portraits of many notable figures of his day. He became the artistic advisor to Louis Philippe and the art teacher of his children.

Literature provided Scheffer the inspiration for his most memorable pictures. Théophile Gautier described him as “un poète transpose; Dante, Goethe, Byron furent ses maîtres plus que Michel-Ange, Raphael ou Titien.” He also painted subjects from Walter Scott, Shakespeare and the contemporary French poet Béranger.